“I’d never seen a female surgeon before,” Lynet said. “Are you the first?”
Nadia shook her head, her back straightening into what Lynet knew was her surgeon’s posture. “My father told me about others, mostly from the South. I’ve even read that Queen Sybil knew all the medicinal properties of the plants in her garden and used them to help the ailing. But hardly anyone remembers her for that anymore. They only blame her for the curse.”
“Sybil’s curse,” Lynet murmured, for the first time wondering why people called it that when no one knew whether Sybil herself was responsible for it. But then, what was the life of a queen compared to the legend people created for her after her death? The truth had stopped mattering years ago. “It hardly seems fair,” she said, more to herself than to Nadia.
“Medicine was my family’s trade,” Nadia continued. “My mother was a midwife and my father was a surgeon.”
“Was?” Lynet asked gently.
“They’re both dead now,” she said simply. “A fever.”
“Oh, I—I’m sorry.”
But Nadia just shook her head with a strained smile. “I don’t want to mourn their deaths anymore. I only want to honor their lives.”
Lynet leaned forward. “How do you choose to honor them?” What she really wanted to ask was how anyone could honor the dead while still feeling alive.
“I want to do what they did,” Nadia said at once, like she’d been ready for the question. “My father studied medicine in the South, before the university closed. He taught me what he learned before he died, but now that Queen Mina has reopened the university, I want to go there too, to walk the same halls that he did.”
“When will you go?” Lynet asked, trying to sound light and casual.
Nadia stared at her without answering, and for a moment Lynet saw the light in her eyes waver with uncertainty. “In the next year, I hope,” she said.
Lynet looked down at her feet on the stone floor. What else had she expected, that Nadia would stay at Whitespring forever, when so few people did? That because Lynet had come out of hiding and spoken to her, she would be forced to stay here forever, to keep her company? No one stayed at Whitespring for long, she knew that, except … except perhaps some part of her had thought that Nadia was so unflinching, so steady even in times of crisis, that even the cold and the gloom of Whitespring wouldn’t scare her away.
“I can’t stay here anymore,” Nadia said softly. “I’ve seen so much misery in the North, so much death.…”
Lynet’s head shot up. “What do you mean?”
Nadia’s eyebrow arched in response. “Have you ever been outside the castle? Have you seen what it’s like for people who can’t afford to bury themselves in fur or sit by a fire all day? Nothing grows here, nothing ever … changes, or gets better. Half of this kingdom has frozen over.” She lowered her voice. “And ever since, all we’ve had are kings and queens who hide behind walls while their people suffer.”
Lynet bristled. “You’re talking about my father, you know.”
“I thought you didn’t want me to talk to you like you’re a princess,” Nadia shot back.
Lynet flushed in anger, a fire spreading through her, and she relished the feeling. She had made the mistake of reaching out to someone who would be leaving soon anyway, but she wouldn’t make the mistake of growing attached to her. Let Nadia leave, if she thought the North was so terrible.
“Well, then, I wish you luck,” Lynet said, her words clipped and even. “I’ll leave you to your work.”
She turned for the door behind her, but before she reached it, Nadia had come around the table and was taking her arm. “Wait,” she said, “don’t be angry with me. Princess or not, I shouldn’t have said that. I understand family loyalty.”
Lynet looked down at the hand encircling her upper arm, and Nadia released her, taking a step back.
“I apologize,” Nadia continued, looking Lynet in the eye. “I’ll be more careful of what I say.”
“No,” Lynet said, “I don’t want that. Then you’ll just be like all the rest. No one here ever tells me the truth; they only tell me what they think I want to hear—what my father wants me to hear. They all treat me like I’m … I’m…”
“Like a butterfly,” Nadia said softly. “Something beautiful but frail.”
Lynet stepped away from the door. “Why would you say that?”
“Because that’s what I thought you would be like, before I met you—before you started following me. Everyone spoke of you in such hushed tones, like you might break if they said your name too loudly.” She studied Lynet, brow furrowing in contemplation. “But you’re not like that at all. That’s not your nature.”
She was still watching Lynet like she was some kind of riddle or puzzle, a mysterious specimen caught in a jar. Lynet found that she didn’t mind, though, because she knew that when Nadia looked at her, she was seeing Lynet and not Emilia.
“And how would you know what my nature is?” Lynet said, tilting her head up at Nadia in a manner she hoped was playful and not lofty or superior.
But Nadia didn’t notice her inviting tone. Instead, she seemed to be silently deliberating something as she focused her intense stare on Lynet. “I might know more about it than you think,” she murmured. She turned away then with a little shake of her head and returned to the table, opening one of her journals.
Lynet followed her to the table, closing the journal she was paging through. “What do you mean?”
Nadia wouldn’t look at her, but her forehead was furrowed in thought. That meant she could be persuaded, if Lynet just pushed a little more. “Did you hear something else about me?”
Nadia glanced up at her briefly, just long enough for Lynet to know that she had guessed correctly. “What was it?” she pressed. “Why won’t you tell me? What can you possibly know about me that I don’t have a right to know?”
“I agree,” Nadia said, and now she lifted her head to look at Lynet, her dark eyes shining. “I do think you have a right to know. I thought at first they were keeping it from you for your own good, but I don’t believe that anymore. It’s not fair for them to keep it from you.” She was still watching Lynet intently, and Lynet understood that she wasn’t just teasing—she did truly think Lynet had a right to know. Perhaps she even wanted to tell Lynet this mysterious secret, but something was stopping her.
“How do you even know about this, whatever it is?” Lynet said, more calmly now. To get the answers she wanted, she just had to ask the right questions.
“Because it’s something the court surgeon should know.”
“And why can’t you tell me?”
“Because I’m under strict orders not to tell anyone, especially you.”
Lynet bit her lip. Her father might know, but she knew there was no point asking him—he would think she was too delicate for any secret. The only person she could trust to answer her was Mina, but Mina would never have kept anything from her in the first place. “But you want to tell me, don’t you?”